Announcements from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy

January 30, 2014

Funding Opportunities

The 2014 National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program Application period is now open. All applications and materials must be received by March 20. The NHSC Loan Repayment Program provides loan repayment assistance to licensed primary care medical, dental, and mental and behavioral health providers who serve in communities with limited access to health care. Both full-time and half-time options for service commitment are available. Learn more

Please note that clinical sites such as CAHs, Rural Health Clinics must apply to be classified as a service site. If you are a clinical site interested in being a service site, http://www.hrsa.gov/shortage/

The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy has released up to $325,000 for two awards in support of the establishment and development Telehealth Resource Centers. Telehealth Resource Centers provide technical assistance to health care organizations, health care networks, and health care providers in the implementation of cost-effective telehealth programs to serve rural and medically underserved areas and populations. For more information on this funding opportunity please visit http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=249573. All applications must be submitted to Grants.gov by February 25, 2104.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology will host a webinar Thursday, January 30th from 3-4:30pm EST highlighting nine new guides intended to help health care providers and others assess and optimize the safety and safe use of electronic health records. The Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides include self-assessment checklists and other tools and address the following topics: high priority practices; organizational responsibilities; patient identification; computerized physician order entry; test results review and follow-up; clinician communication; contingency planning; system interfaces; and system configuration. To register click here.

The Affordable Care Act

Please join us for our ACA and You call, Wednesday, January 29th from 3-4pm EST.

A list of previous and upcoming calls is available on the ORHP website. As always, you can share your experiences or questions at ORHP-ACAQuestions@hrsa.gov. Looking forward to chatting with you!

Medicare Physician Quality Reporting System Deadline is February 28
The Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) is a voluntary CMS reporting program that uses a combination of incentive payments and payment adjustments to promote reporting of quality information by eligible professionals (EPs). Providers or groups of providers who successfully report data on quality measures can earn an incentive payment equal to 0.5 percent of their total Medicare Part B fee schedule allowed charges for covered professional services. The reporting threshold for PQRS is relatively low. An eligible professional must satisfactorily report on at least 50 percentof eligible instances when reporting individual measures, orat least 20 patientswhen reporting a measures group via claims, to qualify for the incentive. Beginning in 2015, the program applies a payment adjustment (penalty) to EPs who do not satisfactorily report data on quality measures for covered professional services. To see if you are eligible to participate or for more information, please visit: http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/PQRS/Index.html